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RADIO STARS
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Jack Smart takes all parts, the more the merrier
JACK SMART is the versatile radio actor and March of Time star who can sound like anything from a bloodhound to a Chinese servant to a Negro chauffeur to Huey Long to D'Artagnan. He's always diving into something different, even to the extent of learning hits of the Japanese and Chinese language to make a dramatization sound authentic.
Jack was a Thanksgiving Day gift to his happy parents. November, 1902, saw the smiling black-haired boy born, and Philadelphia was the city.
It was with regret that Jack saw the passing of the days of Robin Hood, so he decided then he'd do the next best thing and become a Naval officer. However, his histrionic and comedy abilities came to the front and he accepted the unheroic part as clown in school and Y. M. C. A. plays.
One of Jack's earliest and most significant hobbies was making up one side of his face one way, the other side another way, and talking to himself in the mirror.
He seems to have been schooled from coast to coast, taking scholastic experiences at Peabody High School in Pittsburgh and at the Miami Military Institute in Florida. He was later offered a "football scholarship" but magnanimously turned it down. During those school days he earned his way into fraternity dances by entertaining with his one-man ballets.
The City of Buffalo was the scene of further early
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development where he did everything from working in the lumber camp of the father of Colonel Stoopnagle (F. Chase Taylor) — in which he lasted ten days — to playing drums in an orchestra. There he also made his radio debut on the Columbia network in 1929 as Joe in "Joe and Vi." From then on he was slated for a career as radio actor.
Says Jack of his early days as comedian and actor, "My friends always seemed to enjoy my dancing and nonsense. They hastened my end. My father also bought me a set of trap drums to help me on the downward path. I was only discouraged when I walked up to the piano to sing."
He's a clever cartoonist and many of his works have been published. His pet hates, he admits, are "modem (alleged) artists, high hat people, mike hogs, the 18th Amendment and interviews." Whenever ruffled, symphonic jazz makes him feel a whole lot better.